From the day we announced Beyond Sol, our plan was always to keep our community involved in the development of the game with frequent updates on our progress and play-tests of the build, and we also had a plan for a Kickstarter campaign at some point during development where we could give cool rewards to our backers. We think we’ve achieved our first goal of keeping you involved through our frequent dev-blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts, and our limited pre-alpha build of the game. We have also been hard at work preparing a Kickstarter campaign that we planned to launch early in March 2015; however, during this preparation we have taken a look at the state of the project, and it has become clear that while we have a good handle on the scope and cost of the game, we still have a few big unknowns that could have a significant impact on the schedule.
Being veterans of the industry, we know that the cost of finishing Beyond Sol at the quality we want is not an easily predictable number and any number we post in a Kickstarter campaign at this point would wrong. Unfortunately, some Kickstarter projects have – at a similar stage – gone ahead with the campaign and promised a game they simply cannot deliver or a game that will require significant funding from other sources. When these other funding sources fall through, it leads to failed Kickstarters and disappointed backers. We don’t want to be one of the projects that makes big promises knowing the Kickstarter funds are not enough achieve those goals. Once we have reached our Alpha build, we will have a far more accurate understanding of our remaining costs and can revisit the idea of launching a Kickstarter.
In other words, we have decided to postpone the Kickstarter campaign until we reach a point where we can be more certain about how much money we will need. We do understand that many of you were looking forward to some of the unique rewards we were planning to offer including immediate access to the game, and we regret that we have to delay the campaign but we believe it will lead to a more realistic project plan and a better experience and game for our community in the end.
In light of this change, we will pursue alternative means of funding. We already have a few interested parties so we are confident we can find the funds to get us to the next stage. In addition, we assure you that the development of Beyond Sol is continuing without delay – we are simply shifting the effort and resources we would have put into the Kickstarter campaign into a new fundraising round instead.
We thank you for your passion and your patience.
